Competing on Internet Time: Lessons from Netscape and It's Battle with Microsoft

I had bought this book about a year ago, but never got around to reading it until now. My mistake! This is an excellent chronology and analysis of Netscape's growth and the challenges it faced. The quotes from the interviews with many key people at Netscape, as well as people at Microsoft, joined with the authors' analysis was great. I found many, many analogies to Netscape's perdicament with my own challenges at work. I read "AOL.com" by Kara Swisher, which was a good chronology of AOL.com, but it's the analysis and chronology that really differentiates "Competing on Internet Time" from most other "high-tech" books.

This is the best book I have seen on the interplay of strategy and the software business. Finally, there is a book that shows how a company grapples with strategy in the fast-paced and highly competitive software business. Too many other books do not show the strategy process in action. This book not only shows the decisions and why they were made, but the failures and mistakes that happen all the time. Netscape's example shows why it would be awfully nice to simulate your strategy before charging down a road based on gut and assumption.

Firstly, I love Netscape and dislike Microsoft - so I'm a biased reader. However, this is well written and well researched book. It tells the story essentially without preference. Both Netscape and Microsoft made mistakes and this book is fair in presenting both arguements - though it does concentrate on Netscape, but that is where the lessons came from and who it was that took the battle to Microsoft. Get it and read it!

Wow!!! This stuff is priceless for an exec in the software world. The discipline involved in these places is good (i know, i'm a software engineer in a shoddy operations environment). Not a great business book (like Microsoft Secrets) but a great sector specific analysis of great software development. Any Cusumano book is a must read for the intelligent high-tech exec.

I think Cusumano does a very good job at telling a compelling story but at the same time points out valuable lessons that I found very applicable towards my future business career. I especially enjoyed chapter 3 and 6.